The Triliteral Root

Arabic grammar and syntax has not affected the structure of Persian to any great extent. But Arabic influence on Persian vocabulary has been enormous, and though spasmodic efforts have been made in recent years, both officially and by individual writers, to reduce the use of Arabic words, it is unlikely that any marked impression will be made on everyday usage, any more than it has been possible to eliminate Latin from English.

It will be necessary first of all to consider the peculiar method of word construction in Arabic–a method characteristic of all the Semitic languages. In the Indo-European languages (such as English and Persian), words are built up, by means of prefixes, suffixes, phonetic changes, etc., from roots which may at one time have existed in some form as words, but which have only rarely survived as such, and are of little practical value so far as the study of the modern language is concerned.

The Arabic root is exactly the opposite; it is purely theoretical (as will be seen, it consists entirely of consonants), but it is of the greatest grammatical importance. Once the root is isolated, a whole series of words, with fairly well-defined shades of meaning, may be formed from it according to precise ‘mathematical’ formulae.

The majority of Arabic words are formed from triliteral (three-consonant) roots; a few roots have four consonants, while in some cases only two have survived.